The Tyranny of Faith - Plot Summary

This is intended to provide an aide memoire to those who are about to read The Trials of Empire (either as an ARC or next February when it is released--or whenever, really) and who have forgotten bits of / all of the plot of The Tyranny of Faith. Like the plot summary for The Justice of Kings (which can be found here) it is fairly comprehensive, but necessarily omits a lot of detail and nuance.

OBVIOUSLY MASSIVE SPOILERS. This summary contains everything, including how the book ends. If you have not read The Tyranny of Faith, and plan to, this post will COMPLETELY RUIN IT FOR YOU.

I can't make it any clearer than that.

HERE BE SPOILERS

Three weeks after the events of The Justice of Kings, Vonvalt, Bressinger, Helena and Sir Radomir are travelling south to a herbologist for medicines; Vonvalt is suffering from a strange and persistent illness. En route to the capital, they come across Prince Gordan Kzosic and the 16th Legion, who have been dispatched by the Emperor to kill Baron Naumov at Roundstone and then retake the fortress further north at Seaguard (now that Westenholtz is dead).

The party enters Sova. Vonvalt pays a visit to the Magistratum; he questions the Order’s Master, Nathanial Kadlec, about rumours of treachery within the Magistratum. Kadlec denies anything untoward, but confesses that they face a growing number of threats from without.

Vonvalt subsequently pays a visit to the Emperor. Vonvalt tries to impress upon the Emperor the threat posed by Claver, but the Emperor is more interested in clearing out the pockets of treason within the capital. The Emperor tasks Vonvalt with purging the Magistratum of its seditious elements—so-called “Cyrillian” Justices who owe their allegiance not to the common law but to the Neman Church, including Nathanial Kadlec. Vonvalt is, in his stead, named Master of the Magistratum and Lord Prefect, one of the three most senior positions within the Empire (besides the Emperor himself and the Legionary Prefect). On their way out, Vonvalt pays a visit to the Royal Physician, who prescribes him some potions for his mysterious malady.

Vonvalt duly purges the Magistratum with a cohort of Imperial Guardsmen. It is a violent and bloody affair, and Helena is worried about her master’s continued slide into moral laxity, a concern intensified by of the evolution of hers and Vonvalt’s relationship. A nascent mutual attraction, born of the difficult and urgent circumstances, to say nothing of their unhealthy power dynamic, has come to the fore.

Vonvalt, frustrated by the Emperor’s indolence, tasks Helena and Sir Radomir to search the private Master’s Vault in the Law Library for several important volumes on magickal practice. Upon so doing, they discovered that the books are all missing. Vonvalt believes that (the now former) Master Kadlec, a traitor currently being tortured, must have been in league with Claver and given the volumes away. He orders Helena and Sir Radomir to search the former Lord Prefect’s Palace for any evidence of sedition or alignment with the Templars.

Helena and Sir Radomir do so, and do indeed find Templar literature in a hidden alcove. They also question the staff; the ostler tells them about some strange heraldic caparison he saw on a visiting lord’s horse. Upon further investigation with the Imperial Herald, this transpires to be the livery of Sir Vladimir von Geier, the Margrave of the Templar fortress of Keraq, where Claver has made his base of operations.

There is no doubt, now, that Kadlec has given von Geier — who has in turn given Claver — important magickal texts. Vonvalt leads a raid on the Temple of Savare, to find the Templars in the middle of an illegal séance in which Claver himself has taken possession of a corpse. In the ensuing fight, one man escapes—a Kòvoskan—though he is crushed to a paste in the Wolf Gate, Sova’s northern entrance, before he can be captured and interrogated. Vonvalt once again heads to the Imperial Palace to inform the Emperor that there is a Templar conspiracy in the capital being orchestrated by Claver, when he is informed that the Prince Kamil, the son of the Emperor’s own firstborn son Prince Tasa (and his wife by political marriage, the Lady Iliyana of Casimir; House Casimir is the ruling house of Kòvosk, the Empire’s sworn enemy to the east), has gone missing. The Emperor, in spite of Vonvalt’s protestations that this is a likely piece of misdirection by their enemies, orders Vonvalt to find the missing prince.

Vonvalt grudgingly investigates the abduction, whilst his health declines constantly. The abductors have left a ransom note requiring payment to be left in a floating chest in a place called Kormondolt Bay, an inlet several days travel south of the capital in the Grall Sea. Vonvalt hopes to recruit another Justice to his cause—Justice Gothaid, who has as her power “vitaspatial tracking”, the ability to track a person’s life force through the aether—but instead is presented with the woman’s apprentice, Justice Luitgard Roza (who shares the same power). Much to the chagrin of Helena, Roza begins a sexual affair with Vonvalt.

Roza tracks Prince Kamil’s life force to a butcher’s shop in the city’s antisocial trades district, where it appears that the Prince has met his end—though Vonvalt personally does not believe that the boy has been slain.

That night, the household staff in the Prefect’s Palace complain about all suffering from the same exact nightmare – that of a moth.

In spite of the Emperor’s injunction that he turn his attention to the matter of the missing Prince, Vonvalt continues to investigate Claver’s dealings in the capital. He is led to a Kòvoskan barge in the docklands, which explodes before it can be searched. The corpse of a woman is ejected from the wreckage.

With the investigation into Kamil's disappearance at a dead end, Vonvalt, in desperation, attempts to ask the Imperial Soothsayer whether she might be able to sense Prince Kamil’s life force. Instead the woman suffers a seizure, and claims that Vonvalt is being followed by a malign presence which he must rid himself of, or be killed.

That evening, Vonvalt is given word that the former Master Kadlec has died whilst being tortured. Vonvalt travels to the gaol to perform a séance with the corpse. Whilst in the afterlife, it transpires that Vonvalt is indeed being followed by a malign presence — a powerful moth demon known as the ‘Muphraab’. Claver has hexed him using a spell from a book called the Codex Elementa. Without taking possession of the Codex Elementa (which contains the counterspell) Vonvalt will die.

The party heads south to Kormondolt bay, hoping to trap the prince’s abductors using teams of naval boarders. The trap is duly sprung, and only one man — the abduction’s apparent orchestrator Ivan Godric—is left alive. Vonvalt questions Godric using the Emperor’s Voice, but it is clear that he is completely insane.

Perplexed and suspicious, but running out of time, Vonvalt orders Roza to take Godric back to Sova to be imprisoned to await further questioning. Justice Roza urges Vonvalt to execute Godric, but he does not.

Vonvalt, Helena, Bressinger and Sir Radomir now hurry further south, making for Keraq and Claver. En route, Vonvalt teaches Helena the rudiments of travelling to and from the afterlife. Helena begins to suffer increasingly from nightmares and frightening portents. In one such nightmare, Justice August is revealed to be ‘alive’ within the purgatorial realm, taking steps to stop Claver on the other side of the mortal plane.

The team come across the Templar fortress of Südenburg, governed by Margrave Severina von Osterlen. At this point, Vonvalt is too ill to continue the journey; von Osterlen gives Helena and Sir Radomir armour so that they might pretend to be Templars and infiltrate Keraq. As the pair head south, they are caught up in a battle with a force moving north from Qaresh. Claver and his acolyte priests fight in the battle; to Helena’s horror she sees them employ a bastardised version of the Emperor’s Voice, forcing their enemies to discard their weapons or outright commit suicide.

Helena survives the battle, but, exhausted, passes out. She awakes in the subterranean infirmary within Keraq, alone.

Moving through ventilation shafts she comes across an inner sanctum which contains the stolen volumes from the Master’s Vault, as well as a great deal more. She overhears a conversation between von Geier and Claver, in which they discuss their plans to strike north and assault Sova. They leave, and Helena finds and takes the Codex Elementa before setting fire to the rest of the books.

Outside she is reunited with Sir Radomir. The fire is discovered, and in the chaos the pair try to escape. The plan has been to head down a secret escape tunnel which leads out of the fortress entirely, when they encounter Bressinger, who has bad news: the tunnel has collapsed, and they need to find another way out.

Shortly afterwards, the trio are confronted by Claver. In desperation, Helena incants a spell from the Codex Elementa, unwittingly opening a portal to the spirit realm through which demons begin to rampage.

Bressinger, Sir Radomir and Helena flee, this time through a water outflow in the curtain wall. Bressinger is mortally wounded by a demon and dies; Claver, puppeteering Bressinger’s corpse, warns Helena that if she does not give him back the Codex, the demons cannot be stopped. She rips out the relevant pages and keeps the rest of the book, and she and Sir Radomir flee with the help of von Osterlen's right hand man, Luther de Rambert.

They return to Südenburg. Vonvalt has died, but before his death gave instructions to von Osterlen about how he might be saved. Using these instructions, Helena travels to the afterlife, breaks the hex, and brings Vonvalt back to the realm of the living.

The group heads north, this time with Severina von Osterlen, back to Sova. They stop in the town of Saxanfelde en route, where they learn that Prince Gordan and the 16th Legion are rumoured to have been killed in Haunersheim. Vonvalt rushes back to Sova, but outside of the city they are arrested. It transpires that the kidnapping of Prince Kamil was an elaborate trap laid by Claver’s allies in the city.

On her arrival back to the capital, ‘Justice’ Roza lied, and told the Emperor that Ivan Godric was the prince’s killer and that Vonvalt had ordered the man to be executed. Godric was duly publicly and gruesomely executed, but following this, Prince Kamil was revealed to be alive and perfectly healthy. With such a grave miscarriage of justice, and thanks to the strident efforts of Roza and Claver’s allies in the Senate, the Magistratum is utterly discredited and disbanded, and Vonvalt is declared a wanted fugitive.

Senator Jansen, Vonvalt’s friend and confidant, helps Vonvalt, Helena and Sir Radomir escape from the Imperial dungeons. He explains that they were betrayed by ‘Justice’ Roza, and Vonvalt insists on being told where Roza is. He tracks her down and questions her. She reveals that she is working for Lady Iliyana (who in turn is working with Claver); that she is not a justice; that Justice Gothaid was abducted by Kòvoskans working for Lady Iliyana (it was her body on the barge); and finally, that Iliyana has made a deal with Claver to supply his Templar army with large quantities of the explosive blackpowder to assist in his attack on the capital (with the quid pro quo that Kòvosk is subsequently left alone by Claver when he attains the Imperial throne). Vonvalt kills Roza; then he flees the city.

Some weeks later and much further north, Vonvalt, von Osterlen, Helena and Sir Radomir meet with Senator Jansen in the Hauner town of Osterlen. Jansen says that the city is in disarray. He explains that the 16th Legion is supposed to have been destroyed by a large pagan force led by a mysterious ‘warrior witch’; and that, if Vonvalt is looking for soldiers, he might start there. He also suggests that the Wolfmen of the Southern Plains, who have long had an axe to grind against the Templars, might also be persuaded to part with an army. Together— these armies of pagans and wolfmen— might be enough to face down and defeat Claver before the Empire is lost.